The India Recruiting Glossary: 50 Terms Every Recruiter and Candidate Should Know

Indian recruiting runs on a vocabulary that no global HR glossary covers. A recruiter who does not know what a buyout costs, or a candidate who does not know what sits inside CTC, loses money and time. Here is the working list, grouped by where you will meet each term.

Compensation

• CTC (cost to company): everything the employer spends on you annually, including components you never see as cash. The number quoted in almost every Indian offer.
• LPA (lakhs per annum): the standard unit. One lakh is 100,000 rupees, so 15 LPA means a package of 15,00,000 rupees a year.
• Fixed pay: the guaranteed portion of CTC, paid regardless of performance. The number that actually matters when comparing offers.
• Variable pay: performance-linked component, paid quarterly or annually and often conditional on company results as well as individual performance.
• In-hand or take-home: what reaches your bank account monthly after provident fund, professional tax and income tax. Substantially lower than CTC divided by twelve.
• Gross salary: pay before deductions but after removing employer-side costs such as the employer provident fund contribution and gratuity.
• Basic salary: the core component, usually 40 to 50 per cent of CTC. Drives provident fund, gratuity and several allowance calculations.
• HRA (house rent allowance): an allowance for accommodation, partially tax exempt if you pay rent and choose a tax regime that allows it.
• PF (provident fund): a retirement savings scheme with contributions from both employee and employer. The employer share is counted in CTC.
• UAN: universal account number, the permanent identifier linking your provident fund accounts across employers.
• Gratuity: a lump sum payable after a qualifying period of continuous service, commonly five years. Counted in CTC from day one.
• Joining bonus: a one-time payment on joining, often used to offset a notice buyout or a forfeited bonus, and usually subject to a clawback period.
• Retention bonus: a payment conditional on staying a defined period, common during acquisitions or in high-attrition teams.
• ESOP: employee stock option plan. Watch vesting schedule, cliff, exercise price and whether there is any liquidity path.
• Hike: the increase over current CTC in a new offer, quoted as a percentage. The most common way Indian candidates evaluate an offer, and a poor one, since it anchors to past pay rather than to market rate.

Detail on how these fit together in our CTC and LPA explainer.

Notice, exit and joining

• Notice period: the contractual period between resigning and leaving, commonly 30 to 90 days in India depending on the employer.
• LWD (last working day): the actual final date of work. Ask for this rather than notice length once someone has resigned.
• Buyout: paying for unserved notice days to leave earlier. Usually needs both a contractual provision and employer agreement.
• Garden leave: notice period served away from work, still paid. More common for senior or competitively sensitive exits.
• Relieving letter: confirmation from a former employer that you exited properly. Asked for during most onboarding processes.
• Experience letter: document confirming role, tenure and sometimes compensation at a previous employer.
• F and F (full and final settlement): the closing payment on exit, covering dues, leave encashment and deductions.
• Absconding: leaving without serving notice or completing formalities. Typically forfeits the relieving letter and complicates the next hire.
• Offer to join ratio: the share of accepted offers that result in someone actually starting. A key Indian recruiting metric because of the long notice gap. See our guide to measuring it.
• Counter offer: a retention offer from the current employer after a resignation. Common enough at large employers to plan for.
• BGV (background verification): checks on employment history, education and sometimes criminal record, usually run by a third party before or shortly after joining.
• Dual employment: holding two jobs simultaneously, usually detected through provident fund records and prohibited by most Indian contracts.
• Moonlighting: secondary paid work alongside full-time employment, a prominent policy issue in Indian IT since remote work became widespread.

The full picture on timelines is in our notice period guide.

Sourcing and process

• Resdex: the resume database product from Naukri, the primary paid source of active Indian job seekers.
• Boolean search: searching with AND, OR and NOT operators to combine keywords.
• X-ray search: using a general search engine with a site: operator to find profiles on a specific platform.
• Passive candidate: someone employed and not actively job hunting. Most senior talent.
• Sourcing: finding candidates who have not applied, as distinct from processing applicants.
• Screening: deciding which sourced or applied candidates deserve time.
• Lateral hiring: hiring experienced professionals from other companies, as opposed to campus hiring.
• Campus hiring: hiring fresh graduates directly from colleges, usually in structured annual drives.
• Fresher: a candidate with no full-time work experience.
• Bench: employees at a services company not currently assigned to a client project. Often more available than their notice period suggests.
• Backfill: hiring to replace someone who left, as opposed to a newly created role.
• Requisition: an approved open position with budget attached.
• Drop-off: candidates leaving your process at any stage, whether by declining or by going silent. See our ghosting guide.

Company types you will see on resumes

• GCC (global capability centre): an offshore centre of a multinational, doing product and engineering work rather than outsourced services. Formerly called a captive centre.
• IT services: companies delivering technology work for external clients. Typically longer notice periods and different compensation structures from product companies.
• Product company: a company building and selling its own software. Usually pays above services for equivalent experience.
• Unicorn: a private company valued above one billion dollars.
• D2C: direct to consumer, brands selling straight to buyers rather than through retail distribution.
• Tier 2 city: Indian cities outside the main metros, an increasingly significant hiring market with different compensation norms.

Company type matters more than most recruiters weight it, because it predicts notice period, compensation expectation and how a candidate reads seniority on their own resume. Background on the GCC segment in our GCC hiring guide.